Questioning

"Dear Gardeners' Question Time Team,
I had a quite disturbing dream,
In which I saw, lying in snow,
A mandrake, or a wendigo.
I can not quite be sure you see,
and so I make this heartfelt plea.
Can you explain the dream to me?
I know the psychic and occult
May try your skills but a result
To my enquiry will ensure
That I can enjoy slumber more
So help me sleep, I do implore."

"Now, team", the chair - our Kathy - said,
"While normally a flower bed,
Is the sole bed you're asked to make up,
We need to help them not to wake up,
Confused by dreams that need a shake up.
They've sent a sketch of this strange flora,
This elder thing, or mandrogora,
Its bark is light, its limbs branch out,
Its head has antler-twigs that sprout
Its eyes like black beads look about."

Bob Flowerdew asked about the scale
"Was this a cutting or a hale
And ancient outgrowth as a tree?
The quasi-human form you see
Might be a Mandrake's botany
Or nature's random forming art
With roots depending from each part.
Beneath its seeming supple hips,
Its grasping fingers shaped by snips
From secateurs or frost's hard nips!"

Pippa Greenwood, a variant view took,
She waved the sketch and said, "Just look,
The creature here was active, shown
By where the snow by motion blown,
Sweeps round its limbs like leaves out grown.
There are angel wings within the snow,
About this sportive wendigo, and when it rises - then, oh no! -
Before it flies through icy dreams,
The writer will first hear its screams,
Knowing this first may blunt those scenes!"

Anne Swithinbank addressed the chair,
"This is a curious affair,
How can we take as evidence,
The writer's sketch - if a pretense
Is being practiced, what defense
Can mask our gullibility,
We can not assume equity!
They may have made the whole thing up!
In an attempt to string us up,
And we may never yet live down, what such a hoax will bring up!"
.
Kathy Clugston (our present chair)
Attempted then to clear the air
She said the questioner's approach
Was in goodwill and past reproach
And speaking as a strong team coach,
She needed them to choose between
The strange things that the dream had been
But while they struggled to conclude
What was the strange bark-fleshed and nude?
An inspiration struck, and so - they named it as the wendrakego!
.